Orrin Hatch

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now resume consideration of the Schumer amendment, No. 25, that the amendment be modified, and following a statement by Senators Gramm and Schumer--with Senator Gramm going first--for up to 5 minutes each, the amendment be temporarily laid aside in order for Senator Dodd to offer an amendment, No. 75. I further ask consent that there be 40 minutes equally divided for debate in relation to the Dodd amendment and, following that time, the Senate proceed to vote in relation to the Schumer amendment, to be followed immediately by a vote in relation to the Dodd amendment, and that no second-degree amendments be in order prior to the vote. I further ask consent that following those votes, the Senate proceed to consideration of the Wyden amendment, No. 78.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, before you rule on my unanimous consent request, I would like to express my appreciation to both the distinguished Senator from Texas and the distinguished Senator from New York, and also the distinguished Senator from Oregon, as well as the distinguished Senator from Connecticut, for working out these various matters.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the distinguished Senator from Connecticut be permitted to proceed with his amendment with a half hour time limit equally divided, and that immediately after the vote on his amendment, the distinguished Senator from New York be given the floor on his amendment.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. HATCH. I will be happy to.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from New York be permitted to call up his amendment, that there is expected to be an amendment to his amendment by Senator Gramm, and I ask unanimous consent Senator Gramm be permitted to do that, and that we then go to the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. HATCH. I object.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, let me just say this. Let me make this statement: As I understand it, we are waiting for the distinguished Senator from Texas to get here because he has an amendment, I believe, to the amendment of the distinguished Senator from New York. And then I will put in a quorum call and we will get this resolved.

Mr. HATCH. As I understand, he will be here in 5 minutes or so.

Mr. HATCH. Why don't we ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to make a statement as if in morning business and then the distinguished Senator may make his statement until the distinguished Senator from Texas gets here.

Mr. HATCH. Repeat the request one more time.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, does the Senator want me to yield for a question? I just want to make a statement.

Mr. HATCH. I am happy to yield to the distinguished Senator from New York from my time, and then if I could have 1 minute after that. I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished Senator from New York.

Mr. HATCH. The Senator is asking me?

Mr. HATCH. I yield for a question.

Mr. HATCH. Would the Chair tell me the original request? Reserving the right to object, what is the original request?

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I understand we are going to go to Senator Schumer, and after the distinguished Senator from New York, the distinguished Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, let me object for now until Mr. Gramm, the Senator from Texas, arrives on the floor.

Mr. HATCH. Is the offer of the Senator from New York an offer to make a statement only, or does the Senator want to call up an amendment?

Mr. HATCH. I do raise objection to that.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote. I am sorry.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, it is with profound honor and reverence that I, together with my friend and colleague, Senator Cleland, introduce a bi-partisan constitutional amendment to permit Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag. The American flag serves as a symbol of our great nation. The flag represents in a way nothing else can, the common bond shared by an otherwise diverse people. Whatever our differences of party, race, religion, or socio-economic status, the flag reminds us that we are very much one people, united in a shared destiny, bonded in a common faith in our nation. Nearly a decade ago, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens reminded us of the significance of our unique emblem when he wrote: A country's flag is a symbol of more than nationhood and national unity. It also signifies the ideas that characterize the society that has chosen that emblem as well as the special history that has animated the growth and power of those ideas. . . . So it is with the American flag. It is more than a proud symbol of the courage, the determination, and the gifts of a nation that transformed 13 fledgling colonies into a world power. It is a symbol of freedom, of equal opportunity, of religious tolerance, and of goodwill for other peoples who share our aspirations. Throughout our history, the flag has captured the hearts and minds of all types of people, ranging from school teachers to union workers, traffic cops, grandmothers, and combat veterans. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln called our young men to put their lives on the line to preserve the Union. When Union troops were beaten and demoralized, General Ulysses Grant ordered a detachment of men to make an early morning attack on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee. When the fog lifted from Lookout Mountain, the rest of the Union troops saw the American flag flying and cheered with a newfound courage. This courage eventually led to a nation of free men; not half-free and half-slave. In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt called on all Americans to fight the aggression of the Axis powers. After suffering numerous early defeats, the free world watched in awe as five Marines and one sailor raised the American flag on Iwo Jima. Their undaunted, courageous act, for which three of the six men died, inspired the allied troops to attain victory over fascism. In 1990, President Bush called on our young men and women to go to the Mideast for Operations Desert Shield and Desert storm. After an unprovoked attack by the terrorist dictator Saadam Hussein on the Kingdom of Kuwait, American troops, wearing arm patches with the American flag on their shoulders, led the way to victory. General Norman Schwarzkopf addressed a joint session of Congress describing the American men and women who fought for the ideals symbolized by the American flag: [W]e were Protestants and Catholics and Jews and Moslems and Buddhists, and many other religions, fighting for a common and just cause. Because that's what your military is. And we were black and white and yellow and brown and red. And we noticed that when our blood was shed in the desert, it didn't separate by race. It flowed together. General Schwarzkopf then thanked the American people for their support, stating: The prophets of doom, the naysayers, the protesters and the flag-burners all said that you wouldn't stick by us, but we knew better. We knew you'd never let us down. By golly, you didn't. The pages of our history show that when this country has called our young men and women to serve under the American flag from Lookout Mountain to Iwo Jima to Kuwait, they have given their blood and lives. The crosses at Arlington, the Iwo Jima memorial, and the Vietnam Memorial honor those sacrifices. But there were those who did not. In 1984, Greg Johnson led a group of radicals in a protest march in which he doused an American flag with kerosene and set it on fire as his fellow protestors chanted: ``America, the red, white, and blue, we spit on you.'' Sadly, the radical extremists, most of whom have given nothing, suffered nothing, and who respect nothing, would rather burn and spit on the American flag than honor it. Contrast this image with the deeds of Roy Benavidez, an Army Sergeant from Texas, who led a helicopter extraction force to rescue a reconnaissance team in Vietnam. Despite being wounded in the leg, face, back, head, and abdomen by small arms fire, grenades, and hand-to-hand combat with vicious North Vietnamese soldiers, Benavidez held off the enemy and carried several wounded to the helicopters, until finally collapsing from a loss of blood. Benavidez earned the Medal of Honor. When Benavidez was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, the honor guard placed an American flag on his coffin and then folded it and gave it to his widow. The purpose of Roy Benavidez' heroic sacrifice--and the purpose of the American people's ratification of the First Amendment--was not to protect the right of radicals like Greg Johnson to burn and spit on the American flag. The American people have long distinguished between the First Amendment right to speak and write one's political opinions and the disrespectful, and often violent, physical destruction of the flag. For many years, the people's elected representatives in Congress and 49 state legislatures passed statutes prohibiting the physical desecration of the flag. Our founding fathers, Chief Justice Earl Warren, and Justice Hugo Black believed these laws to be completely consistent with the First Amendment's protection of the spoken and written word and not disrespectful, extremist conduct. In 1989, however, the Supreme Court abandoned the history and intent of the First Amendment to embrace a philosophy that made no distinction between oral and written speech about the flag and extremist, disrespectful of the flag. In Texas v. Johnson, five members of the Court, for the first time ever, struck down a flag protection statute. The majority argued that the First Amendment had somehow changed and now prevented a state from protecting the American flag from radical, disrespectful, and violent actions. When Congress responded with a federal flag protection statute, the Supreme Court, in United States v. Eichman, used its new and changed interpretation of the First Amendment to strike it down by another five-to-four vote. Under this new interpretation of the First Amendment, it is assumed that the people, their elected legislators, and the courts can no longer distinguish between expressions concerning the flag that are more akin to spoken and written expression and expressions that constitute the disrespectful physical desecration of the flag. Because of this assumed inability to make such distinctions, it is argued that all of our freedoms to speak and write political ideas are wholly dependent on Greg Johnson's newly created ``right'' to burn and spit on the American flag. This ill-advised and radical philosophy fails because its basic premise--that laws and judges cannot distinguish between political expression and disrespectful physical desecration--is so obviously false. It is precisely this distinction that laws and judges did in fact make for over 200 years. Just as judges have distinguished which laws and actions comply with the constitutional command to provide ``equal protection of the laws'' and ``due process of law,'' so to have judges been able to distinguish between free expression and disrespectful destruction. Certainly, extremist conduct such as smashing in the doors of the State Department may be a way of expressing one's dissatisfaction with the nation's foreign policy objectives. And one may even consider such behavior speech. Laws, however, can be enacted preventing such actions in large part because there are peaceful alternatives that can be equally powerful. After all, right here in the United States Senate, we prohibit speeches or demonstrations of any kind, even the silent display of signs or banners, in the public galleries. Moreover, it was not this radical philosophy of protecting disrespectful destruction that the people elevated to the status of constitutional law. Such an extremist philosophy was never ratified. Such a philosophy is not found in the original and historic intent of the First Amendment. Thus, in this Senator's view, the Supreme Court erred in Texas v. Johnson and in United States v. Eichman. Since Johnson and Eichman, constitutional scholars have opined that an attempt by Congress to protect the flag with another statute would fail in light of the new interpretation currently embraced by the Supreme Court. Thus, an amendment is the only legal means to protect the flag. This amendment affects only the most radical forms of conduct and will leave untouched the current constitutional protections for Americans to speak their sentiments in a rally, to write their sentiments to their newspaper, and to vote their sentiments at the ballot box. The amendment simply restores the traditional and historic power of the people's elected representatives to prohibit the radical and extremist physical desecration of the flag. Nor would restoring legal protection to the American flag place us on a slippery slope to limit other freedoms. No other symbol of our bi- partisan national ideals has flown over the battlefields, cemeteries, football fields, and school yards of America. No other symbol has lifted the hearts of ordinary men and women seeking liberty around the world. No other symbol has been paid for with so much blood of our countrymen. The American people have paid for their flag, and it is our duty to let them protect it. In recent weeks, my colleagues on both sides of the political aisle have called for a new bipartisan spirit in Congress. This amendment offers these senators the chance to honor their words. Restoring legal protection to the American flag is not, nor should it be, a partisan issue. Approximately sixty senators, both Republicans and Democrats, have joined with Senator Cleland and myself as original cosponsors of this amendment. Polls have shown that over 70 percent of the American people want the opportunity to vote to protect their flag. Numerous organizations from the American Legion to the Women's War Veterans to the African-American Women's clergy all support the flag protection amendment. Forty-nine state legislatures have passed resolutions calling for constitutional protection for the flag. I am therefore proud to rise today to introduce a constitutional amendment that would restore to the people's elected representatives the right to protect our unique national symbol, the American flag, from acts of physical desecration. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the proposed amendment be included in the Record. Mr. President, I am very honored to be a cosponsor with my dear friend from Georgia, Senator Cleland. I appreciate the efforts he has put forth in this battle, and having served in the military as he has done with distinction, courage and heroism, he has a great deal of insight on this issue. I am proud and privileged to be able to work with him.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, it is with profound honor and reverence that I, together with my friend and colleague, Senator Cleland, introduce a bi-partisan constitutional amendment to permit Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the American flag. The American flag serves as a symbol of our great nation. The flag represents in a way nothing else can, the common bond shared by an otherwise diverse people. Whatever our differences of party, race, religion, or socio-economic status, the flag reminds us that we are very much one people, united in a shared destiny, bonded in a common faith in our nation. Nearly a decade ago, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens reminded us of the significance of our unique emblem when he wrote: A country's flag is a symbol of more than nationhood and national unity. It also signifies the ideas that characterize the society that has chosen that emblem as well as the special history that has animated the growth and power of those ideas. . . . So it is with the American flag. It is more than a proud symbol of the courage, the determination, and the gifts of a nation that transformed 13 fledgling colonies into a world power. It is a symbol of freedom, of equal opportunity, of religious tolerance, and of goodwill for other peoples who share our aspirations. Throughout our history, the flag has captured the hearts and minds of all types of people, ranging from school teachers to union workers, traffic cops, grandmothers, and combat veterans. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln called our young men to put their lives on the line to preserve the Union. When Union troops were beaten and demoralized, General Ulysses Grant ordered a detachment of men to make an early morning attack on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee. When the fog lifted from Lookout Mountain, the rest of the Union troops saw the American flag flying and cheered with a newfound courage. This courage eventually led to a nation of free men; not half-free and half-slave. In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt called on all Americans to fight the aggression of the Axis powers. After suffering numerous early defeats, the free world watched in awe as five Marines and one sailor raised the American flag on Iwo Jima. Their undaunted, courageous act, for which three of the six men died, inspired the allied troops to attain victory over fascism. In 1990, President Bush called on our young men and women to go to the Mideast for Operations Desert Shield and Desert storm. After an unprovoked attack by the terrorist dictator Saadam Hussein on the Kingdom of Kuwait, American troops, wearing arm patches with the American flag on their shoulders, led the way to victory. General Norman Schwarzkopf addressed a joint session of Congress describing the American men and women who fought for the ideals symbolized by the American flag: [W]e were Protestants and Catholics and Jews and Moslems and Buddhists, and many other religions, fighting for a common and just cause. Because that's what your military is. And we were black and white and yellow and brown and red. And we noticed that when our blood was shed in the desert, it didn't separate by race. It flowed together. General Schwarzkopf then thanked the American people for their support, stating: The prophets of doom, the naysayers, the protesters and the flag-burners all said that you wouldn't stick by us, but we knew better. We knew you'd never let us down. By golly, you didn't. The pages of our history show that when this country has called our young men and women to serve under the American flag from Lookout Mountain to Iwo Jima to Kuwait, they have given their blood and lives. The crosses at Arlington, the Iwo Jima memorial, and the Vietnam Memorial honor those sacrifices. But there were those who did not. In 1984, Greg Johnson led a group of radicals in a protest march in which he doused an American flag with kerosene and set it on fire as his fellow protestors chanted: ``America, the red, white, and blue, we spit on you.'' Sadly, the radical extremists, most of whom have given nothing, suffered nothing, and who respect nothing, would rather burn and spit on the American flag than honor it. Contrast this image with the deeds of Roy Benavidez, an Army Sergeant from Texas, who led a helicopter extraction force to rescue a reconnaissance team in Vietnam. Despite being wounded in the leg, face, back, head, and abdomen by small arms fire, grenades, and hand-to-hand combat with vicious North Vietnamese soldiers, Benavidez held off the enemy and carried several wounded to the helicopters, until finally collapsing from a loss of blood. Benavidez earned the Medal of Honor. When Benavidez was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, the honor guard placed an American flag on his coffin and then folded it and gave it to his widow. The purpose of Roy Benavidez' heroic sacrifice--and the purpose of the American people's ratification of the First Amendment--was not to protect the right of radicals like Greg Johnson to burn and spit on the American flag. The American people have long distinguished between the First Amendment right to speak and write one's political opinions and the disrespectful, and often violent, physical destruction of the flag. For many years, the people's elected representatives in Congress and 49 state legislatures passed statutes prohibiting the physical desecration of the flag. Our founding fathers, Chief Justice Earl Warren, and Justice Hugo Black believed these laws to be completely consistent with the First Amendment's protection of the spoken and written word and not disrespectful, extremist conduct. In 1989, however, the Supreme Court abandoned the history and intent of the First Amendment to embrace a philosophy that made no distinction between oral and written speech about the flag and extremist, disrespectful of the flag. In Texas v. Johnson, five members of the Court, for the first time ever, struck down a flag protection statute. The majority argued that the First Amendment had somehow changed and now prevented a state from protecting the American flag from radical, disrespectful, and violent actions. When Congress responded with a federal flag protection statute, the Supreme Court, in United States v. Eichman, used its new and changed interpretation of the First Amendment to strike it down by another five-to-four vote. Under this new interpretation of the First Amendment, it is assumed that the people, their elected legislators, and the courts can no longer distinguish between expressions concerning the flag that are more akin to spoken and written expression and expressions that constitute the disrespectful physical desecration of the flag. Because of this assumed inability to make such distinctions, it is argued that all of our freedoms to speak and write political ideas are wholly dependent on Greg Johnson's newly created ``right'' to burn and spit on the American flag. This ill-advised and radical philosophy fails because its basic premise--that laws and judges cannot distinguish between political expression and disrespectful physical desecration--is so obviously false. It is precisely this distinction that laws and judges did in fact make for over 200 years. Just as judges have distinguished which laws and actions comply with the constitutional command to provide ``equal protection of the laws'' and ``due process of law,'' so to have judges been able to distinguish between free expression and disrespectful destruction. Certainly, extremist conduct such as smashing in the doors of the State Department may be a way of expressing one's dissatisfaction with the nation's foreign policy objectives. And one may even consider such behavior speech. Laws, however, can be enacted preventing such actions in large part because there are peaceful alternatives that can be equally powerful. After all, right here in the United States Senate, we prohibit speeches or demonstrations of any kind, even the silent display of signs or banners, in the public galleries. Moreover, it was not this radical philosophy of protecting disrespectful destruction that the people elevated to the status of constitutional law. Such an extremist philosophy was never ratified. Such a philosophy is not found in the original and historic intent of the First Amendment. Thus, in this Senator's view, the Supreme Court erred in Texas v. Johnson and in United States v. Eichman. Since Johnson and Eichman, constitutional scholars have opined that an attempt by Congress to protect the flag with another statute would fail in light of the new interpretation currently embraced by the Supreme Court. Thus, an amendment is the only legal means to protect the flag. This amendment affects only the most radical forms of conduct and will leave untouched the current constitutional protections for Americans to speak their sentiments in a rally, to write their sentiments to their newspaper, and to vote their sentiments at the ballot box. The amendment simply restores the traditional and historic power of the people's elected representatives to prohibit the radical and extremist physical desecration of the flag. Nor would restoring legal protection to the American flag place us on a slippery slope to limit other freedoms. No other symbol of our bi- partisan national ideals has flown over the battlefields, cemeteries, football fields, and school yards of America. No other symbol has lifted the hearts of ordinary men and women seeking liberty around the world. No other symbol has been paid for with so much blood of our countrymen. The American people have paid for their flag, and it is our duty to let them protect it. In recent weeks, my colleagues on both sides of the political aisle have called for a new bipartisan spirit in Congress. This amendment offers these senators the chance to honor their words. Restoring legal protection to the American flag is not, nor should it be, a partisan issue. Approximately sixty senators, both Republicans and Democrats, have joined with Senator Cleland and myself as original cosponsors of this amendment. Polls have shown that over 70 percent of the American people want the opportunity to vote to protect their flag. Numerous organizations from the American Legion to the Women's War Veterans to the African-American Women's clergy all support the flag protection amendment. Forty-nine state legislatures have passed resolutions calling for constitutional protection for the flag. I am therefore proud to rise today to introduce a constitutional amendment that would restore to the people's elected representatives the right to protect our unique national symbol, the American flag, from acts of physical desecration. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the proposed amendment be included in the Record. Mr. President, I am very honored to be a cosponsor with my dear friend from Georgia, Senator Cleland. I appreciate the efforts he has put forth in this battle, and having served in the military as he has done with distinction, courage and heroism, he has a great deal of insight on this issue. I am proud and privileged to be able to work with him.

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Vote On Amendment No. 39